Say Yes!
by A. E. Stover
Summary: [KLANCE; High-School AU; One-shot] 4th period gym shoves a pining Keith into the same gym as a shirtless Lance. It also shoves a whole bunch of other characters: Zarkon, Haggar, Pidge, Allura, Nyma... Things get a little weird. Just a little.


_"Heads up!"_

Keith took a step back and stopped for only a second. It was long enough; the basketball whizzed past his face where his face once was. He turned in the direction where it came from, slightly irritated, and got an eyeful of Lance's sweaty, bare chest.

He swallowed hard. Beside him, someone squeezed his arm and stifled a laugh. He would've kicked, but Pidge was a nice girl who'd gone out of her way to change his gym grade so he didn't wind up in summer school, and it probably wasn't a good idea to kick her. He could magically wind up in summer school. With Iverson.

A strong, musky scent filled his head, swirling his thoughts the way cotton candy machines spun sugar—light, fluffy, airy. Heat emanated from a sudden presence beside him, his hand itching to reach out to touch its source. A hand settled on his shoulder, the touch searing through the faux leather of his shirt.

"Shit, Keith, you okay? My bad, dude."

He shrugged, lamenting when the motion caused Lance's hand to slide right off his shoulder. "It's fine."

Silence followed his assurance, and Keith didn't know what to do next. Knowing Lance, the curt reply was taken to mean he didn't want to talk, which also translated to _"I don't like you, leave me alone."_ He doesn't blame him; it's how he is to pretty much everyone outside his tight circle of friends. But Lance wasn't outside his tight circle of friends—he was at the center. Keith just couldn't figure out how to say all that without changing what they already had—because how do you tell someone you love them so much you feel like you could burst at the very thought of being with them, in every sense of the word?

He feels the conversation dying. It strains through the mesh of quick side-stares, stubborn looks to the floor, words of normalcy trapped between uncertain lips as the lull in their conversation turns into a painful, awkward silence, made worse only by the loud echoing of sneakers squeaking on the gymnasium floor and echoing shouts of the basketball team practicing in the background.

Keith wraps his fingers wrap tightly around the strap of his backpack. He doesn't remember why he's even here in the first place; he doesn't know why he thought it would be a good idea to come here. This was a stupid idea; a terrible idea.

He was ready to bolt out of there when Pidge, notorious for being unable to read situations, asked with a laugh, "Lance, why do you have glitter all over your face?"

"Huh? Oh. Oh!"

Keith glanced briefly at Lance and noticed that, yes, there was in fact glitter all over Lance's face. Silver and pink dotted his eyelids, fanning out to sprinkle down his cheeks. There were a few shimmering pieces on his forehead and chin, and some even sprinkled on his nose, dotted with sweat.

Pidge reached out with a thumb and swiped some of the glitter right off Lance's cheek. Then, she sniffed her thumb. "Yum," she grinned, "Strawberry. Is this Allura's or Nyma's?"

Lance cracked a grin of his own and waggled his eyebrows. "Sorry," he said, "I don't kiss and tell." Then, he puckered his lips and kissed the air, winking at them.

Pidge guffawed and rolled her eyes. "What, do ya kiss with your eyes now?"

Pidge's reply was background noise to Keith's thoughts. He was wondering if he'd have the guts to reach out and kiss Lance for real if this had happened with only the two of them. Probably not, because right now, he'd turned abruptly and stalked away to the bleachers. He kept his eyes on his feet, willing the heat on his face to die down as he ignored Lance's whining shouts of "Keith, come back! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that!"

That last one hurt. It pierced sharply in his chest and twisted like a blade. He knew it was stupid, that this whole thing was stupid. His pining was stupid. His getting upset and getting angry and stomping away was stupid. Childish. But he couldn't help it; he couldn't stand there while Lance did all that stuff and pretend he wasn't supposed to take it seriously, because he did take it seriously—he wanted to take it seriously, with Lance. And he wanted Lance to take him seriously, doing all that stuff around him because they were both taking it seriously, together.

"Wanna drink?"

Keith stopped climbing the bleachers and looked up. There was a girl in a black zip-up sweater, her hair hidden beneath a hood. She was drinking from a Snapple bottle, but the label read "strawberry kiwi" and the contents were clear. Also, it stank like alcohol.

Keith narrowed his eyes at her. "…You know this is a bad idea, right?"

"Don't care." The girl pointed an index finger out to the gym. "See her? That's the love of my life right there flirting with some guy who doesn't even know her."

Keith followed her finger and saw… the basketball team, running suicides up and down the gym. He had no idea what this girl was looking at. Was she drunk already? Was she seeing things? How much had she had to drink?

"Oh, wait. That's not her. Who the fuck's copying my girl?" The girl cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted. "Take out that weave, bitch!"

Keith clapped a hand over her mouth. "You're gonna get us kicked out," he hissed.

She shoved his hand off her mouth and drank from her Snapple bottle. She pulled away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "RIP me," she groaned, rubbing her face. The gesture made her hood slide down her hair, though she snatched it back up with the speed of light.

But nobody beat Keith in a game of speed. He felt his eyes widen at the glimpse of silvery hair, realizing who he was talking to.

This was Allura's ex-girlfriend.

And she was drunk off her ass in the gym.

Even in her drunken stupor, she seemed to realize he was staring. She turned sharply his way, a scowl twisting her pretty features as she hissed, "What do you want?"

Keith actually backed off. Then he stood his ground again, because he wasn't gonna let some pissy rich girl show him up. "You talked to me first," he said.

She looked him up and down. Then she took a drink. "You're not my type."

"I'm gay."

"You're _definitely_ not my type."

He narrowed his eyes at her, feeling the uncertainty of where he stood with this stranger churning his abrupt silence into an awkward one. It was divine intervention that rescued him once again, for a shout of alarm at a volume loud enough immediately made every head in the gymnasium turn towards the source.

It was Nyma, who had cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed out, "WATCH OUT!"

And while everyone else's gaze strayed right on the basketball sailing through the air in dramatic slow motion, one person in particular failed to notice it at all.

Because the guy was too busy glaring murder somewhere in the bleachers.

He was glaring at him, Keith realized with a sudden chill, because the guy glaring murder was none other than Zarkon—and he was glaring at him.

The basketball smacked loudly against the back of Zarkon's skull before bouncing to the ground, slowlw rolling ominously away. But Zarkon didn't even seem to notice. He was still glaring at Keith.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. Keith felt the sudden shift in atmosphere in the gym as the silence stretched on as if a godly hand was pulling on the tension around them like it was a piece of caramel stuck between two layers of taffy.

He didn't know what caramel was doing between two pieces of taffy, kinda like he had no idea why Zarkon was suddenly looking like he wanted to snap his neck with his bare hands. They'd never spoken together, not once; the closest they'd ever had to a conversation was sometime last year, when Shiro had said, _"—And this is Zarkon, our main quarterback"_ during a field day, and Zarkon had said something like, _"Hn."_ without looking his way.

Lance had better rapport with Zarkon. Even if the only rapport the two had was Lance's daily _"What up, Zarks!"_ and either a _"…"_ or a _"Hn"_ from Zarkon. At least there was eye contact between the two, and an occasional nod or shrug thrown in for variance. To most of the school's population, that was taken as Zarkon somewhat tolerating Lance, considering the fact that the giant tended to roam the school completely alone or with one of his only known buddies, Sendak and—

Honerva.

He was standing next to Honerva.

And Honerva was 'talking' to him.

Slowly, the wheels in Keith's head started churning.

…

…Did— Did Zarkon… _like_ Honerva? Did Zarkon think— Did he think Keith was chatting her up?

No. Nooo, nononono— _NO._ Everyone and their mom knew who Keith was into— How the hell did this guy think he was into Honerva? He was captain of the football team, surely the guy had some brains left up in there to know literally what the _entire school_ knew.

Then again, the one person he was desperately pining after didn't know at all, so. Yeah. That Zarkon didn't know about it was believable.

Which meant Keith only had one option if he wanted to steer clear from Zarkon's wrath.

He turned back to Honerva and, taking advantage of the harrowing silence still in the gym, spoke to her in a loud voice: "I think Zarkon's trying to ask you to the dance."

Three things happened at once.

Honerva dropped her Snapple bottle. Someone (Allura, maybe) gasped. And Zarkon… became eerily still.

It quickly became clear that Honerva wasn't drinking water from her kiwi-strawberry Snapple bottle, because a sharp, cutting smell of alcohol with some vaguely fruity scent hit the air like a bomb as soon as the bottle shattered against the gym floor. Then she stood up and fucking _jumped._ One of the coaches stared slack-jawed at the lithe girl who suddenly vaulted down the three rows of the bleachers to the floor of the gym, eyes widening further when her hoodie flew off and revealed a head of shiny, silver locks that everyone knew could either be Lotor, Honerva, and Allura—and two of them were already on the other side of the gym.

And then, she sprinted right across the gym and blew through the open doors of the gym—

Wait, where'd Zarkon go?

 _"Oh my god,"_ someone whispered from the side, a girl with bright pink and blue hair, shaking her friend by the shoulders. " _She just ran right after him. Didja see? Didja?"_

 _"Zarkon looked pissed."_

 _"No, I think that was his scared face."_

 _"He can get scared?"_

 _"You saw how fast he ran off. He was totally scared. Besides, boys are wimps. Absolute wimps."_

He wasn't sure whether or not to take offence as the girls chattered and giggled, but a part of him had to reluctantly agree that _yes, she's right._

Because the way Lance was looking at him right now was enough to make him want to jump through the space in the bleachers, roll around in peach vodka, and light a match.

"Keith!" Lance shouted, all eyes now on their school's favorite shooting guard who, for once, looked quite pensive and still-faced. Lance suddenly took in a huge breath, his chest puffing out before quickly retracting; Keith watched a drop of sweat lick a wet trail down from Lance's jawline to his left pectoral and felt the air around him heating up so fast—

"Do you— Do you wanna come to homecoming with me?"

Keith froze. He vaguely remembered hearing a choked sound in his own voice for half a second. The heat around his disappeared and chilled, numbing, then slowly cranked the heat back up as his heart pounded madly in his chest and send a deafening drumbeat of sound echoing in his ears.

It wasn't a drumbeat; and it wasn't the sound of his own heart, either. It was the entire student group in the gym, everyone chanting two words and two words only:

"SAY! _YES!_ SAY! _YES!_ SAY! _YES!"_

But he couldn't seem to say it; there was something lodged in his throat, making it sore, keeping him from uttering a single word. So he just stared, mutely, slowly coming down from the bleachers as the crowd started cheering louder and louder as each step he took brought him closer and closer to Lance.

And Lance, who was nothing but serious confidence just moments before, looked absolutely terrified.

 _Boys are wimps,_ the girl had said, _Absolute wimps._

She's right, he thinks again, because despite hearing the crowd chanting all around them, despite knowing that Lance just asked him to be his date, and maybe even more, Keith's hands were shaking and the back of neck covered with a sheen of cold sweat. He, too, was an absolute wimp

He didn't stop until he was right in front of Lance, until he could see how much of himself was mirrored in Lance's eyes—dark, yet bright; and swimming with doubt. When Keith got to him, Lance cracked a shaky grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling as the doubt in his eyes turned quickly to fear.

Keith opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he saw Lance's eyes flick down to his lips and stay there. Keith felt his mouth go dry, watching Lance staring at his lips, and all he could do was shut them again and, slowly, nod his head.

Lance's eyes snapped back up to meet his, bright with shock. When he spoke, it was soft, and quiet; hesitant. "Is— Is that a yes?"

Keith nodded his head, feeling Lance reach out with his hands to grab his tight. He nodded again, and swallowed hard, forcing the rock lodging in his throat to flush away so he could finally, finally say, "Yeah. That's— It's a yes."

Then he grabbed the back of Lance's sweaty neck just as Lance fisted the front of Keith's shirt and they pulled each other in for a bruising kiss. There was a wild roar echoing in the gym, clapping and cheering and someone evening singing some song Keith didn't recognize. He felt hands at either sides of his face, warm and gentle and possessive and felt a nip of teeth at his bottom lip that sent a sharp jolt of heat down to his groin, making him think— _whoa, didn't think I'd be into that._

Then again he didn't think he'd ever be kissing Lance, so. There's that.


End file.
